Consumption
by peppermintyrose
Summary: Post "Dead and Gone" Sookie has some time to contemplate her relationship with Eric.
1. Prologue

_Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE._

This was written with love and thanks (but without ESN) to Thyra10 (Dead without a Work Permit) who has pushed for this fic setting out all the things we've discussed at the Alexander Skarsgård forum, gathered together in one easy format; and with the help and encouragement of the wonderful members of the Alexander Skarsgård Library Forum. Now I can get it all out of my head, and it can bother someone else for a while. Kisses for encouragement and checking to see if it all sounded alright. :-*

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**Prologue**

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I have a week.

A _whole week _to stay at home alone with my thoughts.

I have a week.

_Recovering from The Incident. _

I don't want to talk about, don't want to think about it. But capitalisation is certainly warranted.

The last thing I want is a whole week alone with these recent thoughts.

Sam has told me I'm not allowed back at work yet.

So I have a week.

I decided to do something "productive" with this week, but thanks to a recent death _that I don't want to think about _I can't clean my clean house. I can't talk to the cleaner that's cleaning anything. She's broadcasting her need to work through it, and since it's due to me, I figure I should let her go to it.

So I resolve to spend my week sitting around catching the last of the sun, healing, cooking, reading, and thinking about anything but _The Incident. _

Eric told me he'll be back on the weekend, and we'll _**talk**_. Oh. Goody. That provides some thinking topics to be had….and such. Maybe if I work it all out before he arrives, I won't need to _**talk **_…least not about what he thinks is necessary. I can just end up with a _**tell**_. That's productive. End goal and getting it squared away…sure. I had some stuff I'd been saving up to think about later, and rather than be alone with my own thoughts, or drowned in the thoughts of others, I could give my thoughts some purpose.


	2. Monday

_Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE._

This was written with love and thanks (but without ESN) to Thyra10 (Dead without a Work Permit) and with the help and encouragement of the wonderful members of the Alexander Skarsgård Library Forum.

Special love to Ashley Sue, who helped me replace Texas with Mississippi. I'm Australian - you're all much of a muchness to me. :D

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**Monday**

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I wake up today and can hear the washing machine going already. I feel exhausted and achy and alone. I didn't think that I could get out of bed and stay there. I spent some time in my bathroom, gulped down a hot cup of coffee. I've been living recently on some meal supplement shakes that Jason got for me. I find that if my thoughts take a turn for the worse, then they are smooth coming back up, and it's easy enough to make another straight away. My cleaner is in no state for cooking. All that time standing around without actively fighting the grime is too much for her. _Poor Amelia…._

I shake myself out of that path. I know it leads nowhere good. Now that I feel somewhat nourished, and normal, I still feel achy and sore, so I went back to bed and hopped straight back in, snug and cosy. Or as snug and cosy as I could feel nowadays what with the state that my body is in….

Time to proceed with the plan. Keep to the goal. First is the easiest – what he's told me. That requires the least amount of examination of me, and might as well start out with the least amount of examination of me.

Eric has told me how he feels about me a couple of times when I think back. Right before I left for Mississippi to find Bill, he told me that he was fond of me. That's a nice sentiment, but not a romantic one.

He told me that the reason that Charles Twining targeted me was due to the affection. But was he referring to the affection noticed when he was with me before, or general affection? I didn't know, and truth be told, I didn't want to investigate that too deeply at the time. Either answer could be one I didn't want.

He cared enough for me to save me from numerous bullets, a couple of murderous vampire bartenders, and various other scrapes I've gotten myself into.

Just because he did those things for me because he cared for me, doesn't mean he didn't also do them because I'm an asset to his business. From what I know, a telepath is not an easily replaced member of a retinue. Vampires can't go out and pick up a new one when the old one wears out.

Particularly since so far, I've proved myself an invaluable asset. I've saved his life, saved him from scrapes too – and saved him money, time and effort. And if I've learned anything about Eric, it's that he doesn't throw away his advantages easily. No vampire does.

So I can't really count on him saving me from my troubles as some kind of special regard, especially since I got into a lot of my troubles because of Eric in the first place. He treats his employees well – I saw that the first night I met him. He didn't leave that bouncer to take the heat in the police raid, but was that bouncer supposed to construe that as anything other than regard from her employer?

I can't treat those issues as having special significance. Eric doesn't do things for just one reason, and I don't want to trust that he did them for one reason alone. That way leads to badness and naivety, and being used.

He's shown plenty of times that he's jealous and possessive, but that doesn't really count either. That's still all about me being a possession, and an asset. Like a kid that has a temper tantrum over having to share his favourite toy, I can't really catalogue that as any great declaration on what he feels. Vampires by their very nature are possessive.

We spent a glorious week together once, wherein we had a very intensive time together. I won't bother to mire myself in the details of that week. Suffice it to say, glorious is an apt word, as is exhausting.

Not only was Eric himself was a lot of things I wanted that week. He was caring, kind, considerate, and deferred to me in a lot of things. He made a lot of declarations that week.

He offered to give up everything that week and stay with me. Like a marriage. But I couldn't hold him to any of those things. They were made without the full knowledge of Eric himself. I couldn't take for granted that he truly meant them. I didn't even take them as truth when he said them in the first place. I know what is fantasy when I hear it, and Eric indulged some of his fantasies that week. He didn't do it because he understood the full implications of what it meant.

I certainly wasn't going to come back and demand anything from Eric that he'd said that week. That's the whole reason I didn't take him up on it the first time – they weren't promises made with all of the available knowledge.

I know _I_ wouldn't appreciate it if someone put me under a spell and I made promises that I didn't want to keep. That's just not fair. The same goes for what he said. I couldn't trust that just because I was the only sure thing he had that week that he really meant it that forever.

That week gave me an insight into what Eric without all of the stuff he usually is and usually knows. But he isn't that Eric now. He's full Eric, with all of the stuff he is, and all of the stuff he knows. That Eric was innocent, or at least as innocent as Eric gets.

He told me that I was the best he'd ever had. He told me so again recently. I'm still not sure if I believe him, but hey, I've had four partners – what do I know of "best" when comparing it to partners over the millennia.

When he remembered that time together, I expected laughter and scorn. What a big shock it was for me that there was no laughter, no shame, no scorn, and no hatred for making him weak. What he told me instead was that this was the happiest he'd been in hundreds of years.

Huh.

The happiest he'd been in hundreds of years? That's an awfully big claim. That sounds great on the surface. Until you've considered when the last time you quantified an event as happiest in years, and then multiply that by one hundred.

That's a lot. And all of it hanging on the time Eric spent with me. It seemed especially "big" to me as the first time he reminisced, he reminisced about talking to me about my life in front of my fire.

Now if he'd mentioned the sex, I could have accepted that. Eric has always told me about his interest in having sex with me. From the night we met, Eric has always wanted that from me. But he didn't mention that first, even though I was sure he would.

What Eric had liked about that week was the same thing I liked. It was the intimacy.

That took a lot of getting used to that idea. That Eric had enjoyed the intimacy.

I would have preferred that he'd liked the sex. Not that he didn't like the sex. That was his second favourite thing, particularly our shower together….

And back to productive.

One of the bigger bombs Eric's dropped on me is the witches' curse. I'd squirreled this away for further thought, and now was the time for that thought. The curse that sent him careening towards my house on a cold night, to take him in and care for him and that went on to set up this chain of events.

_Heart's desire_, he'd said.

That he would be close to his heart's desire without ever realising it.

_Heart's desire._

So what exactly does that mean?

Heart's desire isn't exactly a clear thing. It's not "love of my life". It's not about friendship, but it's not just about physicality either. Anything involving the heart must involve feelings, right?

If you'd asked me what Eric's heart's desire was before I would have told you money, self-preservation or power; or better yet, all three combined. Maybe a visit from Dracula, or at the very least a good battle. Except it was me.

I was the thing that he desired most in his heart, his secret desire. The thing he wanted most. Just sex would have been easy, but this, this was hard.

One of the other bombs he's dropped on me, and it's no less scary, is that he didn't give women his blood – at least he didn't think so since he'd turned Pam.

So for comparison, the last woman he felt this sort of interest in, he killed and tied to him for eternity.

Except I'd made it clear I wasn't interested in staying with him for eternity. He respected this; he knew this, even before I made it clear. He'd told me last year that he considered my mortality often. I shuddered when I thought of how close I might have come to being like Pam.

But he didn't go through with it (thank goodness) and instead tricked me into taking his blood.

From what he says though, he doesn't do this often. It's not a common practice for him to give women his blood. He measured that one in terms of centuries and decades.

Honestly, how many discussions of feelings involve the term "decades"? Worse still, how many involve the idea of "centuries". This sure is couched in terms that mean a lot.

That's kinda scary. But such is it so with many of the things that Eric says to me.

Ugh. He couldn't tell me something small? He couldn't have told me that he loves me and be the end of it. No. Of course not.

If I've learned anything about Eric, it's that "small" is just not his modus operandi. It has to be termed in the grand scale of "before your grandparents were born, I wasn't as happy as I am with you".

That's a lot to lay on my shoulders and a giant statement from Eric. It feels small, until you remember that the person you're talking to actually lived through all that time. He knows what "centuries" means. He's lived them.

I was glad that I hadn't asked him his feelings the night he came to my house. Just the things he'd already said were enough to put the wind up me. Goodness only knows what he would have told me, defined by comparing things over the last millennium.

My grandfather told me before he left that the vampire loved me. I don't know that Eric's words to me were about love. That the vampire loved me wouldn't be so scary and so overwhelming. That would be an easy revelation compared to what he'd told me with his own lips. Love was small compared to the very pressure of declarations that were measured in terms of comparison over hundreds of years.

I started to get a headache with all these big thoughts. They were almost too big. I wasn't made over centuries. This time scale was all wrong.

I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

I woke up hours later, feeling a bit refreshed, a bit stronger, a bit livelier, and a bit more healed. Things were going well. The blood Eric gave me seemed to be doing its job.

I hopped out of bed, going through the routines in the bathroom again, and back to my silent kitchen, clean as a whistle, for another shake, and maybe a piece of bread.

Eating that piece of bread took it all out of me though, and I came back to bed to try to grapple with ideas of feelings compared over centuries. That I was a rare event that seemed to make all the difference in Eric's life, and undoubtedly future matter for a _**talk**_.

Then it occurred to me. I started today _**wrong**_.

Eric's feelings were still a bit of a puzzle to me. I couldn't think in terms of centuries, or happiest in hundreds of years. I just wasn't made that way.

When it comes to decisions, Eric's feelings shouldn't be in the picture. They're nice to hear, albeit confusing and too much, but they don't really matter in this decision.

Eric is a lot of things. Centuries old vampire. Former Viking. Sheriff of Area Five. Devious, conniving, manipulative and gorgeous.

One term (one I hate, although it has its uses) I would never apply to him though is _pity fuck_.

Eric's feelings shouldn't play a part in my decision. He's better than that. He deserves more than that, and he has more pride than that.

If I take Eric's feelings into account on my decision, if I go with what he wants, rather than what I want, then that's all he'd be. I don't think he gave me these big and scary declarations so that I could demean him like that.

No, what he's told me so far is at its heart the opposite of that idea. He wants me because I make him happy. He wants me because he hasn't felt this way in a long time, and I give that to him. He wants that to be returned. He wants more than just me conceding myself to him like "every kid wins a prize" at the fair.

I owed him more than that. I owed him some honesty. I owed him genuine gestures, not empty ones.

With that thought, I drifted back to sleep, to start somewhere different tomorrow.


	3. Tuesday

_Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE._

This was written with love and thanks (but without ESN) to Thyra10 (Dead without a Work Permit) and with the help and encouragement of the wonderful members of the Alexander Skarsgård Library Forum.

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**Tuesday**

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I woke up, fresh out of nightmares that involved silver, that involved biting. That involved terror and chunks of flesh…

I have a plan.

Funnily enough I don't feel like following my plan, or at least, I found I planned it all wrong last night. I'm feeling melancholy today, and reminded of my not so happy recent past, and _The Incident. _

Instead, I'm going to focus on my happier not so recent past.

I could focus on Eric, and the things we did. The ways he entertained me, for that week, the best way he knew how. But at this point I don't think I can handle it. I can't think about my body and forget its pains.

So instead, I intend to think about how much I learned about Eric himself. That's worthy for consideration, isn't it? In terms of what I want this undefined intimacy to be, that's a big part.

So I drew myself out of bed, to the bathroom, coffee, shake, piece of bread. Amelia had the floor polish out, and what seemed to be a toothbrush for between the old floorboards. My floor would gleam, and maybe Amelia would feel better. As a bonus, the toothbrush didn't seem to be mine, so things weren't getting worse.

I glanced out of the window with my piece of bread half eaten, and the sun was calling to me, shining down brightly. Since inside seemed to be the domain of those who clean out the grit in between the floorboards, I took some dry biscuits, iced tea, and headed outside to bask in the sun and the sky. I'm told my family loves that.

I move one of the lawn chairs into a bright patch of sunlight, and allow myself to indulge in a few tears for my godmother, Claudine. When it becomes too much, I turn my thoughts back to something concrete, something I can deal with.

Eric.

So what is it that I know about the man – vampire – himself?

Well, that's an easy one to start off with. First impressions account for a lot. The first time I saw him, I thought he was gorgeous, but I also thought that he scared me to death. In truth, Eric still scares me to death, and being vampire, his looks haven't changed a bit.

Everything in Eric's world had a purpose. His office was filled with paperwork, his bar with paying customers. His belongings were high quality, but I hadn't noticed that he had a favourite shirt. He had a favourite combo, usually anything involving jeans and t-shirt, but that's just because he's a guy. The garish and over the top belts seemed to do the job of the new brooch for an ensemble. He didn't have a lot of souvenirs lying around, and didn't sentimentalise much. Everything he had served a purpose, and was highly practical.

Even his gifts were practical. He didn't give me things like a beautiful pair of earrings, but instead practical things. A driveway, a front door, a coat. These were things I really wanted and needed. Brand new practical things that I'd use every day, and would always remind me of him. Somehow, I think that's part of the appeal for him. After all – I can keep the earrings in my drawer, but I haven't figured out a way to avoid the driveway.

The only frivolous thing he ever gave me was a bunch of flowers, and that had a distinct message – unmistakable and very Eric. But everything else was practical and something I used every day. All the better to think about him, I suppose. He'd practically paved his way to my front door with remembrances of him.

He'd given me other things too, but things I wouldn't count as a gift – a cell phone (to replace the one he threw against the wall in his oh-so-subtle way of ending a call) and money that I spent on a kitchen. With all the memories of the week he spent at my house, there's practically nowhere to go or look at my place that doesn't have some connotation of Eric. I can't even look at myself without seeing how his blood has changed me.

During his stay with me, his essential personality didn't change very much. Eric's always been quick to enjoy things, always been adventurous, and always lusty. Of course, he was also frightened that week, but really only for the first couple of nights. After that, his anxiety level seemed to slide right down again. He still had his fiery temper, too. If Pam and Gerald hadn't been there, he would have killed Amanda that night in Merlotte's.

Cursed Eric still had that desire to take some risks, and didn't try to protect me from everything. He happily bounded over to see the witches, and left me alone surrounded by werewolves. Regular Eric normally wasn't high on making sure I was protected from all harm – he took calculated risks all the time. He told me so himself when he sent me to retrieve Bill in Mississippi.

Safety wasn't an important issue with Eric. It seem that he preferred to take risks and do fun things, albeit dangerous things. That's one thing I'm glad about. Eric didn't seem to want to lock me up and try to preserve me like I was a souvenir. I can be thankful that there's no glass cases or gilded cages in my future, at the very least. That "joie de vivre" Bill referred to Eric possessing made him value that sense of daring, instead of trying to stifle it.

Of course, Eric has his own sense of daring. I'd seen him fling himself into battle often. Eric loved nothing better than a good brawl. I can still see him in my head the way he leapt in with great gusto at the Queen's party barn. I have no doubt that if he's ever to meet his end, Eric will choose to go with a bang, and not a whimper. Maybe that's why he enjoys being around me – I seem to come across various battles often.

That week, the week we spent together alone, I found out some more about the essential Eric. One of those things made me very wary. It seemed that with very little information, Eric could come to good guesses.

For example, when Pam and Chow came to see us, he remarked that he must be a very frightening person; based on very little information I had told him and what he got from our visitors. With a toss of a perfume bottle, he found out that I'd had more vampire blood than he'd thought I'd had. Every little thing he did could expose more about me.

He's devious, conniving, manipulative, extremely intelligent and dangerous. It makes him a good vampire. Without being like that, I'm sure he'd have been dust long ago.

And that's a real problem. I can never be really sure of the Eric I'm getting. Not totally. He may not lie to me, but I knew he didn't tell me everything. He omitted, rather than lied. That made this all so much harder. Is he kind to me because that serves better to manipulate me, or is he kind to me because he wants what's best for me, or is he kind to me so that he can get what he wants?

I couldn't just assume that he did it for one reason only – Eric never does anything for one reason only. Even that bunch of flowers he first gave me - it wasn't enough to let me know he hoped I got better, he also wanted me to know he wanted to have sex with me, all bruised up as I was. I couldn't test the emotions from the blood bond either. I didn't want to have to endlessly analyse the source of the feeling of happiness. That didn't solve anything – was he happy because I reacted how he wanted, or happy that I was happy? Reading emotions was a bit of a waste of time without thoughts.

He could be the man he has discovered I want, through trial and error and observation, and sucker me right in. I would never know what he was doing. That alone seems reason enough to be cautious with what I think I know about Eric.

Hell, even my conversations with him involved more than one layer. I puzzled through the idea that there was a takeover coming with a couple of hours to spare, and it was always like that with him. Eric always seemed to be saying things that I would 'get' later, or he was pulling absolute scads of information out of me.

Information that could be dangerous to me, or to others, like the way he'd tried to get information on the death of Andre, or my ability to read vampire minds. Goodness knows what else he'd gathered from me, with help from the bond and all the other vampire senses that let him know when I was telling a lie, or whatever reaction I had.

I knew lots of secrets, and being a telepath I had so many secrets it wasn't funny – none of them mine to share. I knew about Halleigh's pregnancy and Alcee Beck's unfair treatment of his fellow African Americans. I had my own secrets and things I didn't want laid bare to the world because they serve a purpose. I didn't want someone to tell anyone that Andre had killed Peter Threadgill so it could come back to haunt me because of some weird vampire plot that started years before I was born. Sometimes I'm the repository for secrets, and I keep careful guard on myself to not let them slip. Eric shouldn't get a special pass on that for practicality purposes. But he was vowed and determined to get that information out of me, and then let its purpose be revealed in some clever strategy. That strategy would be his decision of course, not mine, no matter whose secrets they were.

Eric is all about strategy. It's kept him alive for over a thousand years, and worse that that, it's his _job_. It's how he's chosen to spend this part of eternity. Since he's the only Sheriff from Sophie Ann's reign left, I daresay he's good at it. So it's possible I wasn't just an asset, or his _lover_, but a strategic tool too. You don't tend to get an eternity or a reprieve if you ignore all your resources, so I'm not going to fool myself that for some higher moral value Eric would be reluctant to use the secrets I hold.

One thing I think I know for sure is that Eric catalogues everything he finds out I do, even when I'm not with him, filing it away for future reference. He notices everything from what colour nail polish I wear noting that it matched my new coat he'd bought, to where I shop for clothes. Eric arranged credit for me at my friend's store for clothing for Rhodes, and he knew all that without asking me a thing. He knew about the private detectives that came to see me about Debbie Pelt, even though Charles was dead for the day; and he knew about Amelia's advisor, Octavia. I'd thought at the time that he'd gotten that information on the Internet, but who writes magical secrets on the Internet?

The supernatural world is full of gossip – it spreads everywhere. Cataliades himself had warned me about the impending Fae troubles. So that was another place where Eric could find information out about me. Since the supernatural world is all about jockeying for power against the other groups, then the secrets I know could be of value. If it were better strategically to do something, then Eric would be the first to do something without consulting me. He just wouldn't hesitate, or ask me – after all, I'd been part of his strategising.

Feeling hungry, I ate my dry biscuits, and sipped on some of my tea. I got up, aching all over from staying still, and wandered around my yard, turning this over and over in my head.

When I felt a bit freer in movement, and a bit warmer, I turned back inside for a bathroom break and more solid food. I was doing well and hadn't thrown up in a while. Tomorrow I might sit down and have a proper meal. All of this deep thinking was certainly making me hungry. That wasn't a totally bad thing either. I needed to get my energy back.

On the way to bed I noticed that the floorboards were glossy and reflected light back at me, and the grooves in between them were grit and dust free. Feeling tired again, I trundled back to bed to think some more before sleep took me again. Lately, I've been so very weary, and I remember my Gran telling me that sleep is when your body repairs itself, so I that's a good thing, right?

I snuggled back down in the covers, and felt a measure of relief that I was back in my own bed, safe and warm. I went straight back to my thoughts.

The fact of the matter is that Eric is pervasive. He's in a lot of my life. To a certain extent, he's absolutely everywhere, including in my own body, through his blood or the bond. There comes a point where that can make you feel trapped into him, consumed by everything he is. Eric is just so "big" in my life I it feels like I don't have much to myself, that's just for me. He knows lots of things about me, and that's not always a good thing. It seemed like the stuff I knew about Eric directly affected me, or had been what I directly observed.

On the upside, that meant that I didn't often have to tell things to Eric. If I didn't want to talk about something directly, I could give a good code to Eric, and he'd get it. When I told Eric I had to break my friend's hand with a brick in front of a crowd, he got it. I didn't have to explain to him why I was so upset - he factored in Jason and Calvin, and how it made me feel. He even tried to make me feel better later on that night about the whole incident because he talked about the burden his authority placed on him. I didn't have to spell it all out for him, at least most of the time.

Truthfully, that was one of the easier things for me about Eric. I'd gotten used to this benefit, the benefit of not having to tell him everything. He could get information out of me about how I felt about something with a few well thought out questions, like asking me how I felt about Quinn and whether I loved him and he was intelligent enough to figure out the answers. With the help of the bond he could see how I felt about something just by asking. He didn't even need the answers to my questions. Like emotional flash cards.

But what did I know about the essential "Eric" under all that? I knew he was great for light humour, and I'd thought once that that was one of the things I'd liked the most about him. He "got" me. I laughed more with Eric than I did with anyone else. I definitely liked that.

I knew some inconsequential things about him too – that he could make basic home repairs, or at least makeshift repairs. He nailed my front door shut when Debbie got in, and helped Bill board up my windows after the Mickey incident. But he couldn't use a dustpan and brush, and didn't hang up his towels and Pam seemed to keep his resting place clean. He rinsed out his bottles of True Blood (at least when he was staying with me) and he could make a bed. Housework seemed to be a selective thing for Eric.

I know incidental but selective things about his personality too, like that he's an extremely prideful man, enough to interest a Maenad despite being dead, or that he drops his contractions when he's furious. What he said was usually honestly how he thought about something. Eric had a sense of humour to match mine, and he could do some things I enjoyed. He'd asked me to dance quite a few times, and he was a good dancer. But I didn't know if that was a true joy of his, or just a passing fancy he took for my sake.

Eric did other things too for my sake – he tried to call Sam by his name when I was borrowing Charles Twining from him and telling him about Sam's shooting, and tried not to have too much contempt for people. That's not to say he didn't have contempt, but he wasn't too dismissive. I knew from the look he shared with Sam when I told them both about Calvin's hand, that he didn't like Jason, but he kept it to himself mostly. He didn't go out of his way to be violent to others. He considered my presence, and changed his behaviour accordingly.

I didn't think he did those things when I wasn't around to watch him. That was too romantic a notion. I didn't escape my notice that there was an eagerness for violence in Eric's actions at Fangtasia. All of the denizens of the bar were waiting for him to do something to Dave who thought it was a good idea to tell me in his drunken state that I shouldn't be sitting with a vamp. He just didn't do that sort of thing around me. He was ardent, rude or aggressive, without being violent. He hadn't even ripped off my clothes in our more passionate moments.

Eric sure could be cutting though. He'd used harsh words to bring me down. He threw my foolishness back in my face when he'd accused me of knowing Quinn no better than I knew Bill. When I'd told him about the time he'd spent at my house, he inferred later in our conversation that I was sleeping with half the supes I know. With a well-placed jibe, Eric could really bring some of the worst parts of my life rushing back to torment me. Violence was the last thing he needed to get to me.

There was a place in his world for violence, of course. Eric had killed humans, vampires, weres and fairies in front of me. I couldn't ignore his violent tendencies. He was vampire, after all. He killed, and had been killing for a long time now. It was also something that he thoroughly enjoyed. Like a hobby. He even killed before he became vampire. Vikings weren't reported to be the lop-eared bunnies of the ancient world.

Eric played by a different set of rules than I did, and to be honest, I wasn't too clear on what they were. He'd told me that he was never a Christian, when we were cleaning up Debbie and that didn't give me a hint as to what he really believed. That very idea was so foreign to me. Even someone like Holly who believed in her Wicca ideas had been raised in a world of Christians, taught those values, even if she rejected them. Not Eric – his set of rules may be radically different to mine and I had no frame of reference.

Of course, Eric doesn't follow rules very often – he breaks the law whenever he feels like it. From murder and arson to road rules. He had no problem with burning down that rival vampire bar in Bossier City, making the announcement that Fangtasia was the "Premiere Vampire Bar". He follows the rules only when it suits him, or when it's of benefit to him. What's more is that even though I didn't always follow the rules, I felt bad about breaking them. Eric didn't.

Eric doesn't follow conventions either, except when it suited his purposes. He'd been at ease with kissing me or trying to bed me regardless of whether or not I'd had a boyfriend. He skated a fine line with ease, ignoring, omitting or plain old lying if it was necessary. He'd tricked me into doing things too, like taking his blood or being pledged to him.

Eric was ruthless. If he saw something he wanted, he just went after it with a perseverance that was stunning. He was the consummate view of the perfect businessman, going after what he wanted with a vengeance. Eric didn't mind too much if his goals came at a dear price to others. Sometimes I'd paid that price too. Everything about my life had become entwined with his interests, or reminded me of him, which was in his interests.

Eric was also ambitious. He had a business empire that I knew a little about, and I'd learned not long ago that he was richer and more powerful than I'd ever really comprehended. Eric controlled a substantial part of Louisiana, and had his fingers in all kinds of ventures. His ambition didn't extend to being King, but I thought that that was probably a strategy for keeping himself alive. Kingship seemed to be a demanding job, and one that was ultimately fatal. It was for Sophie Ann.

That was one of the paramount goals for Eric – anything that kept him alive was a good thing. He wasn't a martyr, willing to die for someone else, or throw his life away for a principle. He was pragmatic to a fault. Eric had told me once that he'd be my friend as long as it didn't endanger his own life, and he'd stuck to that policy. He'd rather push me out of the way instead of taking an arrow that was meant for me. He calculated risk, and took chances, but he didn't extend himself if the risk was too great.

I could think about Eric on the surface, but I don't know how well I really know him. Apart from what he did at work, which seemed to be his entire life, I didn't really know what other interests Eric had. I don't know that I know him well enough – and hadn't Eric made me feel a fool for not knowing Bill well enough?

Ultimately, Eric was a guy with layers though. After a thousand years, I think you build up layers. Maybe my quest to know Eric was doomed from the start. Maybe I could just have a good approximation, and nothing more.

With that thought, that not so comforting thought, I gave a long sigh and my eyes drifted closed.

* * *

A/N: The Bossier City incident (Bossier City is a sister city to Shreveport) is mentioned in Chapter 5 of DTTW - in my Ace paperback, it's page 87. All of the things referenced in this fic can be found in the books themselves. Hopefully I've given you little reminders with the prose I've used, but hardly anyone remembers the arson, hence page numbers. :D


	4. Wednesday

_Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE._

This was written with love and thanks (but without ESN) to Thyra10 (Dead without a Work Permit) and with the help and encouragement of the wonderful members of the Alexander Skarsgård Library Forum.

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**Wednesday**

* * *

I wake up today feeling a bit better than the day before. All that twisty thinking yesterday seems to have tired me out so I could get a deeper sleep. I could hazard that the sleep made me feel almost refreshed. Not dog tired and mopey. I washed my face and considered clothes, but didn't think today was that day.

I get up and actually make myself some breakfast. Admittedly it's toast, coffee and jam, but that's way better than meal shakes. I eat it all, and feel like I've achieved some sort of wonderful goal, some way towards normality. Looks like today can be a day for some tough thinking.

At that moment Amelia comes in like a whirling dervish with added bleach, and tells me that she's going to scrub the entire kitchen. She even gives me a small smile. Knowing that this cleaning routine is helping her work it through, I decide to make it for the front porch swing, where I can lie down for some serious introspection. I make a meal shake to take out with me so I can sip it while I sit outside, out of her way and think.

Today I'm going to go for what I've been avoiding since this started. Today I'm going to think about how I feel about Eric. Tara told me I'd have an opportunity to really be honest with myself during the day. Well, today the day is upon me. Yesterday I spent a bit of time cataloguing Eric and how he interacted with me. Some that I feel frankly scare me about Eric and affect how I feel.

One thing I know is that I trust Eric. I trust him, and I have for a while now. I trusted him to take me to an orgy. Eric, lusty vampire, I trusted to take me to an orgy. Truth be told, I trusted him way before that. I gave him entry into my house soon after Bill became an Investigator for Area Five, and I didn't rescind it because I thought that Eric would help me if I were in trouble. I just assumed that he wouldn't just rather let me die instead. Sure, he might pop into my bedroom at his leisure, but that speaks of my trust of him, at least with my physical safety.

I don't know that I trust him with a lot more than my physical safety. No person in their right mind normally places their blind trust in a politician, right? Certainly, no one entrusts a vampire with moral fortitude either. And businessmen aren't known as the members of society worthy of the highest trusts. At least, not in my world. So who would really trust a vampire politician/ businessman? Shouldn't I just be a little bit cautious, with someone I know is devious, manipulative and conniving?

I'd seen some of his excellent political manoeuvring firsthand, and it took me a while to puzzle it out. Sam sent me to get a bartender from Eric, that I thought at the time was explained by our need for someone who wasn't a shifter, but could handle the violence we were experiencing at the time. Later on, when he was convincing me to take Charles to my house, Sam made it clear that he didn't think I was safe and needed the vamp there. Of course, I'm an old veteran with plots now, so I thought about the fact that Sam might have called in a bartender from Eric to protect me from someone who might have been targeting me, and not Sam. I was right next to Sam, and it seems Eric drew the same conclusion, because he perked up when I told him that detail in Fangtasia. Now, Sam's anger when I arrived back with Charles Twining, erstwhile assassin, finally made sense.

Eric and Sam were both trying to give me an unofficial bodyguard. Sounds good on the surface right? Like he really cares. Except Eric tricked Sam into giving him an unspecified favour, and he used me to do it! No wonder Sam was angry once he realised what he'd agreed to. The fact that Eric could work through it all so quickly and still find a way to get more than was due in his own favour, really made me worry. Eric could think at lightning speed, and he didn't mind a bit if it came out with him ahead. His smile while he was telling me he liked the idea of Sam owing him a favour lets me know that Eric _knows_ he's smart and faster – faster than most.

It seemed sensible to not put my complete trust in Eric. He cared about me – I truly believed that. But I couldn't just let him handle things for me and blindly ask no questions. Eric has the responsibility for himself, and his businesses without tacking on the extra job of allowing him to do all my thinking for me. Not to mention, Eric is limited by the world he lives in. Sure, he's found a way to get around orders he doesn't like from the hierarchy, like sending me to Vegas, but I don't think everything is always going to go his way. That just didn't seem to be the right thing to do, to just delegate all the thinking to him. Eric wasn't my caretaker; he was just supposed to care for me. I trust him, but sometimes I find that I have no choice but to hope that my trust isn't being abused. If I abdicated thinking for myself, I could find that trust abused easily.

Didn't I place my trust in people, only to be turned aside again and again? I'd learnt early and often what it was to be betrayed over and over again. That's one of the hardest things to deal with in telepathy, at least for me. To think that people were basically good people, to hear it said over and over in Church; but to find over and over that despite this, their thoughts and actions didn't often match up with that. People could be petty, nasty, mean and without compassion. I learnt quickly that I should be cautious – careful with my real thoughts and feelings, not to push, not to help unless I wanted to be targeted with that same pettiness and meanness.

Didn't I trust Bill too, and have that trust shattered? I blindly believed everything he said, and found myself in the dangerous supernatural world. I let him make decisions for me, to give me advice on things, and I found myself declared a possession, and in serious danger from no less than Eric himself. I blindly believed his declarations of love, and took them at face value. I didn't use any caution with Bill, and I got badly hurt.

I trusted Quinn too, and thought I went ahead with caution, making all the right moves. That didn't work out either. Did I really have it in me to trust any more? Life and people, supernatural and not, had taught me that trust was something I couldn't have in many.

I'd trusted Eric too – and he'd acted in his highhanded way and done things his own way. Sure, they were for a purpose, but that doesn't mean I want to abdicate all my decisions to him. I wasn't built that way, and really, how much respect for me would Eric have for me if I did that? It certainly wouldn't earn me respect in the vampire world. Those with weak wills got used and tossed aside there.

Eric told me once that he was always surrounded by people who wanted things. I don't like being a possession, someone needy for lots of things all the time, one of those who want things from him all the time. I wanted to be given his time and effort, not demand it. It just wasn't in me to expect anything – I'd learnt over and over that I had to rely on myself to do it all. I didn't want to use Eric, I just wanted him. God help me that was the scariest thing about all this. I wanted him.

Who the hell has a feeling of "rightness" with a Viking warrior vampire who discusses things in terms of centuries, and who has threatened my health with goons showing up to drag me in after he met me in Fangtasia? He once mused that perhaps he should just bite me and end it all or arouse me and find out if I really was the best he'd ever had. This was not an idle threat, since I'd actually seen him end the lives of others. Who else can say that they first kissed their honey surrounded by dead people post massacre? Well, apparently me. That's not any fun story – it's not even a story you can share with anyone. Did you start off with the fact that there's a girl with part of her head missing a couple of feet away, or the fact that you'd just sucked his blood out of his shoulder? A human would be horrified, at least if they had seen real dead people like I have, and a vampire would be turned on. I feel right when I'm with him, and sometimes I wonder what that says about me.

All the things I know about Eric, and the way he is, and he somehow feels an affinity with me. Worst still, I feel that affinity with him too. That's so scary that he's the person who gets me. We're so very different, and it seems that there's so much I don't know about him, and can never know.

Some of the things I do know about him scare the hell out of me. He can mention casually that he _could _torture me, and he can stroke my face while surrounded by his recent murder victims. He's completely at home with things that totally horrify me, or should. I sometimes wonder how my immortal soul copes with this constant association with creatures who think it routine to see dead bodies, and being around Eric seems to mean lots of opportunities for dead bodies, one of which could soon be mine.

Deep down though, I know that at least part of my feeling is trying _not _to feel this affinity with him and sometimes I think I put roadblocks in the way of just being with Eric. I admit I'd found a whole mode of ways in which to avoid this feeling. First, it was his physical affect on me. I cited his phenomenal skills at kissing, and then I downplayed that as chemistry or ability with every woman. Then I used his desire for my skills, fairy blood, and finally the blood bond. When I felt that wave of delight at the sight of Eric the night Victor was waiting for me, I fought the feeling and questioned whether it was from the bond.

That blood bond is a real problem for me. I'm just not sure if I can trust the bond. It unnecessarily creates a further complication to an already complicated situation between Eric and I. Things would be so much easier if I had taken Andre's blood that day. It wouldn't add this extra-unneeded complication to our relationship, which isn't simple at all.

I certainly can't go and ask anyone else about it – no one warned me about a blood bond before – not even the vampires who'd given me blood. They both knew I'd had their blood twice, and third time was the lucky charm. How could I really expect the truth out of them, even if I wanted to ask? Both of them had vested interests in what they wanted me to know about blood exchanges. Quinn knew about blood bonds, but he too had his own spin on things.

I really couldn't ask anyone else about it – I would have to test this myself, not take someone else's word for it. After all, I'm the one who has to live with the consequences if I get it wrong, either way. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere, so I have time to explore it. And if it does go away, then that's one less confusion to deal with.

I know I'd never met another human I knew was blood bonded to a vampire, and I wasn't sure there was a support group. Or at least I hadn't received the newsletter. I smiled and rolled onto my side. I was feeling a little chipper today. I started sipping my shake, thinking this through.

I know that the blood bond makes me feel things. It makes me insanely happy when I'm near Eric, and I don't want to trust that as some sort of diagnosis of my true feelings. After all, I had that feeling when he was coming up a corridor in Rhodes when I didn't know he'd be coming. That doesn't make me feel like these are my feelings.

What I do know about vampire blood is that it's supposed to make me co-operative. Andre thought that Eric would be able to call me and make me heel because of the blood I'd already had. All of the advantages were on the side of the vampire there. I would be a complete fool to take it as written that the balance of power shifted with the full blood bond.

After all, that same blood gave a maker control over their vampire children. That's what vampire blood seemed to be made for, control. With all I know about Eric and his manipulations, I don't want to be naïve and just assume something about the bond that will lead nowhere good.

I know that since we've bonded, I think of Eric every sunset. I know I feel him and he can feel what I feel. It has its advantages and its disadvantages. I used to be able to keep my feelings to myself, but now I find I have a built in detector for how I feel about everything. A really interested detector that takes note of how things are going. Emotional flash cards are a double-edged sword.

I'm not so comfortable with the idea that I can feel Eric's emotions anyway, even if I could trust them. One of the things I always appreciated about my vampire lovers is that I can't hear their thoughts. Now I find myself with another invasion, but this one is different, relatively new and untested.

That silence I appreciated, the lack of pressure of knowing their every thought is now replaced with having to think about emotions. Ugh. I can't rely on them to tell me anything concrete like I can with thoughts. I can only rely on how Eric feels at any particular point, and it just isn't as succinct as thoughts.

Telepathy isn't very reliable. Sure, I can always get a thought from someone, oh how I can do that. But it doesn't have to relevant or useful. It could be what the person had for lunch. Emotions were even worse – without the thoughts to back them up, they didn't provide any real basis for anything, unless I could shock Eric into feeling truly and finitely about something. In my experience, I couldn't rely on Eric to be shocked about much, and if you can shock him, like I seemed to do in Alcide's apartment in Jackson, he won't be shocked long enough to actually sit there analysing it.

I'd have to wake up three days early in order to get the jump on him – he was used to controlling himself with a handful of centuries of discipline. I know you have to keep your emotions under control to keep your face impassive, and vampires give good blank faces most of the time.

Since I often find myself thrown into the complex supernatural world, I don't think I've had much time in order to know for sure what's appropriate. I can't figure out my own emotions sometimes. I don't have the capacity to tell how it all goes with Eric emotionally. My once-held-dear silence is gone, to be replaced with this "fun" new emotional jumble to figure out.

I'd seen first hand how emotions could be gotten wrong. Bill accused me of feeling lust for JB – and I'd been thinking about Bill at the time. Emotions and body language just don't give the same clarity as thoughts. Not even thoughts tell the entire story all at once anyway, but they're still less of a jumble than emotions.

If I thought I found myself in simpatico with Eric beforehand, well I certainly can be now. I knew that he was too busy with the new King to be around me – it had stopped me from going to him numerous times in the last couple of months. But that's a small benefit, compared to the big drawbacks that there can be. Like how I really feel about something.

On top of that, the bond is with Eric, who is manipulative. At best, I feel like I'm constantly on edge and exposed to his every interest, with him carefully cataloguing everything I feel. I can't tell if the masterful politician is testing how our conversation is going and then tailoring what he says to me. It'd be nice to have the outlook that Eric has only my best interests at heart, but I can't be sure. Sometimes "best interests" can be a relative term to Eric. It's really what he thinks is in my best interests, and Eric isn't infallible.

I'm the person who has my best interests at heart. I know I want the best for me. All I need is the information to make a decision, and I'm not going to do what is the worst possible scenario. I can prioritise what I think is the most important thing here, and decide accordingly. I can't just give all that over to Eric as if I wasn't a real person, but his special pet, his honoured McPeople. I did once let him glamour me, but I had a stake in my side. I didn't want to be like that for the rest of my life, letting someone else make my decisions for me.

Eric has assured me that he doesn't and won't use the bond to control me. That's nice, but I can't tell at this point what he means by control. Even if he doesn't, should I feel grateful that he doesn't? I don't think so. I don't think many women wake up every morning thanking their boyfriends for not putting them in shackles today. Just because he's a vampire and he has an advantage doesn't mean I'm going to thank him for not being an absolute monster. Sure, other monsters that wouldn't hesitate to use it to their advantage surround him, but isn't the point that he doesn't want to be a monster part of the attraction for me? The blood bond is a metaphorical shackle, which Eric doesn't use by the grace of choice. But I refuse to be grateful that he doesn't enslave me.

After all, I don't recall Eric thanking me all the times he's been in his daytime sleep around me for not staking him, or dragging him out into the sunlight unprotected. That makes up part of the trust he has in me, and I have in him, but it's not bigger than that. I don't see why I should be thankful that he allows me my control over what is my own life.

I'm grateful for the comfort that the bond gives me, like when he bolstered my courage in the vampire court in Rhodes, but it doesn't really make me feel sure in myself. Maybe I should consider a menopausal support group for older ladies – "What to do when your emotions are out of control". Surely they'd have some tips. But somehow, I don't think evening primrose oil will do anything for a blood bond.

I've only been bonded to Eric for a short amount of time; I just haven't eased into it yet. In the meantime, at the very least, Eric has a window into my emotional state, and he can tell things about me. If I have it all wrong about the bond, and it's all me, then Eric will know that. I even told him that if the bond isn't responsible, then I love him and he can carry me away. If it really is all the bond, that should be enough to tide him over until I find out. Until I'm sure, I'm not going to take it as written though. If that's a good thing for me, I will be able to learn to trust it, but if it's a bad thing, at least I've been cautious.

One of the things you can't have enough of around vampires is being cautious. I'd been caught out too many times to just sit around and do what I was told. After all, I didn't once pursue any of them. Sophie Ann sent Bill to me, seeking me out. Eric sought me out, and called me into Fangtasia, and later ran down my road. Victor and Felipe chased me too. Not once did I go to them. Now it looks like I'm stuck with them, so I think I should take a leaf out of the "good vampire" book and be cautious myself.

I learned that the spineless people around vampires got used and tossed away as so much trash. I remember when Ginger, one of the Fangtasia waitresses died. The vampires didn't do much more than give money – her death meant nothing to them because of course she should protect their master's bar. Unless I wanted to be trash, I wasn't going to let that happen to me. Eric maybe, I could trust, but Eric wasn't the only vampire in the world. A whole contingent of vampires came along with that. Eric is an excellent strategist, but sometimes even his options are limited. He has to take orders from those he serves, be they King or maker. Letting Eric make decisions for me and just doing what I was told would make me a big target to others too. All the other vampires would see is a tasty, obedient McPeople with fae flavours. I couldn't let that happen to me, and I am the person who has the ultimate responsibility to myself.

When it comes down to it, I haven't had much of a one on one relationship with Eric either. We spent that week together as lovers, but he wasn't his real, full and complete self that week. He was a hollowed out shell of Eric, and even though he made me happy that week, that Eric didn't exist. If anything, he was incorporated into Eric himself, but that wasn't all he was. Cursed Eric didn't have the weight of the centuries that I noticed in Regular Eric.

Even that week, I wished sometimes for his stronger personality traits, and my ability to lean on him. I wanted him to just be quiet and strong when we were leaving the witch war, not looking to me for reassurance. His ability to be in charge and not rely totally on me, and I got the feeling was the same thing he liked about me. Eric didn't spend his time living in my pocket normally. I just don't think he liked that sort of thing; he just needed it that week because he didn't understand.

Eric doesn't surround himself with shrinking violets. I like that Eric doesn't want me to forever defer to him. If he did, he'd be no more than just my glorified thousand-year-old father. I'd had all those fights with Bill over that very thing – being treated like a possession and told what to do with myself, chastised like a naughty girl. I don't know that I could be with Eric if it was like being a slave without being enslaved. I might as well give in and call myself a minion if that was the case. I want to have at least a minimal choice, and if I don't have a choice, the very least I want is to be able to express my displeasure with my lack of choice.

More than ever, I want to be treated like an equal. Since long before I met Bill, I'd resigned myself to growing old and dying alone, I don't think I need to just fall into line because a man wants me to. Sure, I'll do it if it's in my best interests, but I'm not going to smile and be a telepathic Stepford wife, even if I _was_ married to Eric. If it comes to the two choices, I'd just be alone. I have enough people trying to force me to do things, or manipulate me to their way of thinking. I had the were packleaders wanting me to help them only in their favour, and I had the rest of the vampire world. I couldn't stand more, even if it was Eric. If Eric, who loves control, just couldn't understand that I might need to rail about having no choice, then there's no hope he'll ever understand it. I think he does though.

I just want a man who can just be with me. Sometimes the easiest thing about the week I spent with Eric is that we could just _be_ together. I felt that same easiness with him when he was last over, but I don't want to just base my life on what I've felt on a few occasions when we're alone.

I think when it comes down to it, I just need more time. I need more time to get used to my relationship with Eric, and what the bond means. If I can ever get any time that is, and so far our alone time has been on the slim side, at least as a couple.

I mean, I can get whole stretches, like this week or a couple of months at a time when he's entertaining the King, by myself. But I also need time with Eric. Considering the amount of information he's dropped on how he feels about me already, it would be cruel to give him the impression that it's something more than it is. I chose my words very carefully when I told him how I felt about him, and didn't make out that I was committing myself to more than I could give. I can't bring myself to be so cruel as to give him false hope.

I want to be honest with Eric, but at the same time, I don't want to make assumptions and end up in a bad place. I don't want to be so vulnerable that I get taken for a ride, investing everything only to have it fall down like a poorly built house of cards, based on lies. I've had that, and I don't want to do it again. I want to be sure. I want him, and sometimes it comes down to cravings, but I'd spent a while with Eric, watching him cast people off easily. I don't want to do something I can't fix up, or change. This is my life, not some theoretical puzzle that I can redo over again if it doesn't go right.

Ultimately, I don't want to be like the thousands of other women in Eric's life. I told him myself I didn't want to be controlled by him, and he tells me that he wouldn't do that to me. I have far too much pride to be kicked around like that, and since that's his livelihood in Fangtasia, I don't want to trust too much that there's something there that makes me so very different. That's his pattern, and I'm sure if I was willing to fall into that pattern, he'd be telling some other girl about me in a homogenous group long after my death.

I want to matter to Eric, but at the same time I fear it. I've never been interested in just being one of a faceless group – that's not my style to be one of the many that mean nothing. But I've also known what it's like all my life to stand out, to not be included in the group. I want to be seen for what I am, but I don't want to be separated from others. If I have to account for vampire nature, then I think some sort of consideration should be there that I'm mostly human, with human feelings, human needs. I want my humanity considered by whomever I am with – I don't want to feel like I'm included in a group as against all the other humans that are nothing. I don't really want to have to change everything just to make him happy, or make him feel better, or to fit in with him. If there is something there that makes me different, then surely, it's kept his interest so far, even if I don't quite get what that thing is.

If he still means the whole heart's desire thing, then I am already what Eric wants. I don't need to change, or wonder about what exactly he needs from me except to be myself. I want him to see me – the real me – not some idealised version, or some different version of Sookie. If he wants that, I'm sure he can find a fangbanger willing to wear sundresses and tan. With the added benefit of glamour, I'm sure he can.

Eric has pursued me with persistent bloody single mindedness. He's made it clear that he wants me. That has been the one constant since I met him, never wavering. I'm not so sure I want to mess that all up by doing the wrong thing. I know I don't want to give all of my life over to be controlled by anyone else. I want a partner, not a boss. I don't want to be the boss either.

I know too, that my control is not what it should be around Eric. So far, I'd formed a blood bond with him and am now apparently married to him. Sometimes I wondered if I gave in to his demands too easily, and I'd end up in a bad place because I relied on Eric to make a decision for me.

I'd seen him regret bad decisions. Eric didn't always get it perfectly right, and he had regrets. He cursed his own foolishness in his strategy in not telling his people to scatter the night of the Vegas takeover. I couldn't always rely on him to get it right and give all the pressure over to him. He could help me, and advise me when it came to vampire matters, but I couldn't just rely on him all the time for everything, and plainly, I didn't want to do that either.

Eric didn't exactly encourage me to keep all my own control either. He loved control just as much as I did; his life was filled with control. Control of Area Five, control of himself, and sometimes control of me. Even though I knew it made the bond deeper, I couldn't seem to refuse his blood, much to my chagrin. In my head I would disapprove, question, but when it came down to it, I just didn't have complete control over it. Only recently I'd chastised him for being high handed and giving me blood while I was unconscious, only to take a little bit more only moments later because he asked me to. That can't be good.

Even Pam was amazed that I went along with the whole knife stunt, with not a question in my head. Not until it was practically too late anyway, and only because she prodded me by asking if I'd even looked. Even though I didn't actually want to be married in the back office of a bar, I hadn't stopped to even open the package and get an inkling of what might be on the cards. I lose too much control when I'm around him, and I wonder if I'll make a mistake in trusting. Like Eric, I know it's bad for me, but I can't seem to stop.

I could lose myself in him, let him consume me in more ways than one, and find myself in a couple of years or even a couple of decades without any resources to get free. I could lose myself and become nothing more than a repository for the thoughts of others and Eric's wishes. There's nothing worse than being the endless repository for the desires of others, and I've spent my life trying to shut that out. Now I have Eric, who really can consume me body, mind and soul – he can eat me up whole in a heartbeat.

Since I've known him, Eric has been the one person who informs me of what sort of trouble I'm about to get into. He told me all about what might be happening with Bill in Jackson, and warned me that Niall had enemies. I can usually trust what he tells me, even though it may not be the whole truth. I can trust him to be at least a bit predictable. I can trust him, cursed or regular version to want to get me into bed. Now he even makes me feel safe by his very presence, even though I know there's nothing safe about him. That seems worth a bit of time to wait and see how I really feel about it.

Just because Eric is sure now, doesn't mean that I have to fall into line quick smart. He tells me that at least as I understand it, this is profound for him. I only want the same thing – something profound for me. I am not, and don't want to be lesser than him. Less fulfilled, less satisfied. If a vampire over a thousand years old can hope for that, surely I can too. After all, if this is wrong, he has the rest of his unlife to make it all better or try again. Wait for the right time. I have only this one life, and I'm not intending to throw it all away on romanticism and fairytales.

If there's anything my life has taught me recently, it's that fairytales don't come true. The plucky telepath doesn't always win, the white knight doesn't always ride in to save you at the last minute, the bad guys sometimes win and good guys pay the price. It isn't all made better in the end, and no one rides off into the sunset without a care in the world. There isn't some great lesson or moral to accompany the loss – there's just more loss. I've had that lesson gouged into me, bitten in, beaten in and bashed in. I can't lose myself in this like it's a romance novel, because the reality never fits the story.

Feeling heartsick and tired, I went back to bed to sleep my way to tomorrow.


	5. Thursday

_Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE._

This was written with love and thanks (but without ESN) to Thyra10 (Dead without a Work Permit) and with the help and encouragement of the wonderful members of the Alexander Skarsgård Library Forum.

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**Thursday**

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I awoke to the birds chirping and the sound of indiscriminate scrubbing. I understand it's hard for Amelia at the moment, but I hope there's still some paint on the walls when she's finished.

I make my way to the bathroom and then the kitchen in the same old routine. I make my toast and coffee, but I think I'll leave the shake for later. Amelia is scrubbing the floor on the back porch, and it's all sudsy, looking like some good hard work.

I say good morning in a tentative way, and she gives me a little smile. She's looking a bit haggard, but she's getting through it all. I can hear from her brain that she's happy to see me out of bed and walking around. I realise that at least in part, my own invalid nature has been weighing on her too. I ask if she wants a coffee, and she gives me a bigger smile.

I bring her the coffee, and not wanting to force this to some happy place neither of us can go just yet, I go into my gleaming, neat as a pin living room and sit down on the couch.

I left it yesterday in a pretty bleak place, somewhere I've come to know as reality. Political realities in the vampire world made my life difficult at the best of times. Everything you got from vampires in general seemed to be a double-edged sword. Nothing was either conclusively good or bad, or at least it hadn't been for me.

When I went to the conference in Rhodes, I was paid. However, despite Claudine's warnings and everyone's caution, Sophie Ann made it clear I had to go anyway. What an all round disaster that was, from start to finish. Vampire royalty seemed to like casting a spanner in my works as often as they could too.

There isn't a way to get an easy solution to the problem of vampire royalty. I'd heard Eric say in my hearing that he didn't want to be King, and I couldn't blame him. Becoming King was a demanding job that seemed to have a lot of responsibilities, took a lot of time in the already limited night, and it was definitely fatal. After the Nevada vamps took over, I doubted Eric still had enough political clout in the state to seize control. Eric loves Eric, and I doubt he'd risk everything on something not so sure. His time was when Sophie Ann was injured, not now. Even if by some miracle he became King, there were always other royals jockeying for political power, and I had a part in all those power plays as long as I was around Eric.

Being King just painted a big target on your back and kept you very busy, overseeing people. Sheriff seemed to suit Eric, with just the right mix of responsibility and free time. Hopefully he'll have more of that now the new regime has settled down. Eric's time used to be much more free before this takeover, and I know that the King spent a lot of time combing through Eric's life. If Eric became King, there'd be so much less time to see him. Maybe that's why Eric likes being only Sheriff, happy to leave de Castro to it.

When I saved Felipe de Castro from Sigebert the berserker bodyguard, little did I know that I would get an offer of protection from the King that Eric told me was a real honour. If I called in the favour, his vampires were bound to come and give their lives for mine. But the edge to that favour is that the King later made a claim on trying to give protection by having me in Las Vegas.

Eric pulled the quick manoeuvre of pledging me to him, committing me to my relationship with him without a thought. It was ruthless and expedient, and so Eric. In classic strategic fashion, it also stopped the King from having leverage over him. This is what I mean by not being able to just put my complete trust in Eric to always do what's in my best interests. There may have been another way to do this whole thing, but this way also served Eric's interests. I know that the choice rested with him alone on whether he'd tell me of some other method all together.

Now I was pledged to him, and I used up my favour just recently. So as always with vampire politics, I couldn't come out ahead. My favour was all used up, and I'm still pledged to Eric. Now, Eric didn't have any indication that I would use up my favour, although I surely would have just judging by my history. But in the end, I end up maybe in a worse position than before – after all this sword could have another edge that hasn't whacked me in the face…yet.

I knew next to nothing about what I'd committed myself to, and what the rules were. I didn't even know what the divorce process was – if there is one. Vampire law doesn't get much updating. From Sam's reaction, maybe there wasn't one. Which is just great. Just fantastic. Talk about being boxed into a situation. Sure, I didn't want to go to Las Vegas, but maybe one day I'd want to choose something different.

I've only been dating – only thought it was a possibility for about a year and a half, and already I'm "wed" to a man I don't feel I know well enough. I can imagine how well that would go over with every other man I thought about being in a relationship. "Oh by the way honey, just to let you know, I'm married to a vampire…" Another giant roadblock to any other relationship and I haven't even made a decision to be in this one for the rest of my life.

It would take more than a hug to fix that, and even a quick phone call couldn't make that sting go away. To be committed to a marriage I didn't know was happening. Even better, we've spent a total of about a fortnight as a couple, a week's worth of that without his memory. _Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judah. _To top it all off, I didn't even question him until after the deed was done, and I still didn't know what the rules are.

Unless I hoped to disappear for the rest of my life, leaving everything I know, then there's no way I'm ever going to get out from under vampires. I don't think I had a chance from the moment Hadley opened her mouth to Sophie Ann. Since then, too many vampires know about me, and now I pledged myself to one in an office in a vampire bar. The groom wore a lime green t-shirt. The stuff romances are made of.

Expediency and political awareness took things away from me all the time. Now I'm wed to him, and even though I can see his point and told him so, I can't just act as if it's all fine because it's not. I don't want to have to be married to anyone just like that, as if it means nothing. I'm only glad he didn't summon me to the registry office. But then, that would take my agreement to sign the damn papers, even if Eric did double as officiant Priest and Groom. This just required me to hand him a knife. I still want to punch him in the face for that one. I want to punch Felipe de Castro too for making it necessary. If only I could, and have it do anything but hurt my hand.

Of course, the bar itself is a big dose of reality and possibility for hurt for me too. I couldn't walk in without being assailed by the thoughts of all the denizens, barring the vampires anyway. Those thoughts can run the gamut of some sort of nefarious plot to kill people, to the ramblings of drunks, to the overwhelming lust about the vampires, to business issues for Eric. And that's just what telepathy brings to the table.

Being with Eric makes me subject to the jealousy of other women and men as well. When I was last at Fangtasia, I got a taste of that phenomenon. Just being there and talking to Eric is enough to draw the ire of vampire fans everywhere. I also had to deal with the fans coming up to his table or gasping at him. He was magnificent, after all. I can't fault people for thinking about things – everyone does it, and Fangtasia relies on the idea of accessible vampires. It's for tourists and people who find vampires fascinating, and I have to accept the atmosphere as part of the deal.

I could get the special broadcast at random about any of the fangbangers' sexual experiences with Eric too, of course. Eric asked me about my fidelity when he was here with me, and it can't have escaped his notice thanks to all the times I refused him when I was with Quinn or Bill that fidelity is an issue for me. Hell, it was the reason I cited to Eric while he was cursed that Bill and I broke up. Eric is smart enough to put all that together, and since it seems important to him that I am with him only, I can assume it's weighing on his mind. So unless Eric wants to deliberately upset me, I don't know that he's going to be silly enough to do anything at the bar. Even if he used his glamour to erase it all, I can read it from any of the waitresses at any time I walk in.

Considering how cutting his remarks could be, I wasn't going to ask for anything. Asking just didn't do any good whatsoever. It didn't stop all the infidelity I'd read fresh from the brains of Bon Temps residents. Eric would do what he wanted – I didn't want him informing me how it's going to be. I asked Bill not to feed on anyone I had to see, and after we broke up, that's all he did – bring Selah Pumphrey around to shove in my face. I'll be damned if I give Eric any more ammunition than he already has to hurt me. I've learnt from my mistakes – I won't be having that again.

If it didn't end up working out with Eric, then I didn't want to be in the world of the supes, having Eric chuck some new girl in my face all the time. I didn't need the fangbanger-du-jour rubbing up against him in some attempt to make me see the error of my ways after a break-up. It either mattered to him or it didn't, but I'm not going to fight a pointless battle. I can't control him; I'm just barely keeping control on me, without patrolling Eric too.

If Eric asked me about it, it probably mattered to him, but me making rules wasn't going to make any difference. I could only control me, and he'd gotten that assurance, and he'd either control himself or he wouldn't. Eric analysed me all the time anyway, so I'm sure he'd get it. If he didn't, then he just didn't care enough, and at least I'd know. I'd face that little telepathic surprise of Eric's actions when it actually happened. I didn't need to borrow problems.

Of course, Fangtasia presents other problems too. It seems to make Eric angry that he can't help when people think nasty things about me. When I told him about Bobby Burnham hating me, I was a bit worried about Bobby. I don't like him, but that doesn't mean he should be punished for things he thinks. Not liking me is not a capital offence, or a punishable offence. People rely on the privacy of their own brains, and I learned long ago that I just need to accept that. I can't make them change.

My deals with vampires always rely on humans not getting hurt thanks to my telepathy. I don't want to be the cause of some relatively harmless person getting hurt because they thought the wrong thing at the wrong time. My thoughts aren't always perfect. I think bad things about people. I need Eric to understand that he can't control what people think, even if he can control their actions. He can make Bobby my servant for all time, and it doesn't matter because it's all in his thoughts and tone of voice.

I'm constantly on edge, because one day I might end up getting people killed or hurt, through no real fault of their own. I often wonder if I'm in danger of falling into a moral abyss, and being around any vampire can allow you to lose that humanity and treat people like they didn't matter. I have enough killing, murder and death in my life without filling it with those who dissatisfy me. The last thing I want to be is the tyrant, picking out random thoughts and issuing hurt on people. It doesn't help anyway because people can't help what they think. Unless you killed them, they just couldn't maintain constant control over their thoughts.

The subject of more death and killing is such an issue between us. The fact of the matter was that we'd spent far too much time around dead people, or hurt people. Wherever we went they seemed to crop up. It still seems to be an issue of contention between us. I was all for trying to keep people alive, for peace, and doing all I could help, but it sometimes didn't worry Eric. But it worried me plenty. My life was so full of violence that I just didn't want any more than was absolutely necessary.

I could accept that Eric had killed people, and that I had too. I'd made peace with that. But I wasn't going to lose my essential humanity by just letting it all go on if it didn't need to. Eric couldn't wipe out everyone who didn't approve of me, or of him, or those who didn't do what was he thought they should. It was our latest disagreement too. In the supe hospital, he would have just let Bill die for displeasing him, and lay it all on my shoulders. I had enough deaths on my account – I didn't need Eric making sure that there was one more to add to my exponential tally.

The guilt of having others punished for their failures around me would eat me up inside, drown me and I couldn't stand it. Bill shouldn't die because of _The Incident_. That wouldn't change anything, and all it would mean is that one more creature suffered when they didn't need to. So many suffered through that incident. I want Eric to see that Bill is no more or less to blame than he is, or than I am. No one got to me in time to stop it all, and I wasn't careful enough – Bill shouldn't pay the price for not being all knowing if Eric doesn't hold himself or me to the same standards.

I can't think of all the supes I hold dear to my heart wanting to hurt each other, much less over me. So many of them died protecting me, and the price was so high and so terrible. I couldn't keep adding to the sheer senseless loss, and I couldn't let Eric do that either. I want as much peace as I can carve out for myself. Telepathy doesn't give me much, and it's all I want. I don't want to be swallowed whole by the violence until my soul is so stained I just don't care anymore. It's bad enough to get the nasty thoughts from others without filling my reality with it all. More than ever, the thought of more violence fills me with dread, even if I'm not the victim.

I need to have a break from my thoughts, so I go into the kitchen. Amelia is making herself some lunch, and I see that her shoulders aren't so tense since she's found peace through scrubbing. She sits down at the table with me, and asks how I'm going. I tell her I'm almost physically normal. She gives me a sad little smile. I can hear from her thoughts that she'll be glad to go back to work and throw herself into something else next week. I'm right there with her.

Downtime from work gives me all this time to think, but dwelling on things won't help. I lived one hour of _The Incident_. I wasn't going to bring that hour into the rest of my life, going over and over it all. It would make that hour draw out for the rest of my life, and I'd end up breaking long after I was well. Thinking of the grim realities reminds me of how much I have to cope with.

I give myself a bit of a pat on the back for not breaking before. If even vampires were left in rags by _The Things_, I needed this control, my free will to get me through, didn't I? I needed hope too, but that was in short supply at the moment. I didn't just need this control and some power over my life for some silly little ego trip. I needed it to feel like I could cope with the hard twists fate threw my way. Otherwise, how was it possible to continue if today involved less slavery than tomorrow, less control than tomorrow? By sheer force of will, I'd gotten through things that most people couldn't comprehend. If I had any hope to get through more of this, this thing that has become my life, I needed some reason to go on. Slavery and doing what you're told didn't fill me with hope for the future.

Just because I'm born with telepathy doesn't mean that everyone else is more important than me. I had to be better, to rise above it all, or I'd just be like those people I hated to listen to. Broken like Jane Bodehouse, with nothing to live for. I'd listened to her internal dialogue more than I wanted to. I didn't want to be like that, relying on Eric like alcohol to drown my pains. That way left no hope, only emptiness. I need to hold onto what is me, no matter how wrong being me might seem sometimes. I tried to be a good person, and I often thought about how I could be better. I didn't want to scurry to the biggest bully in the yard, or use the person who cares about me the most as some sort of painkiller. I couldn't let that life be sucked out of me because it's all too hard to resist.

Eric knew this. I know he'd survived some terrible things, and lived through much more. He kept going, and I think that's because he wasn't boxed into the bleakness. When Eric came to the supe hospital, he hadn't treated me with kid gloves, pitied me and made my sorrow come crashing down on me. He'd made it clear that it wasn't over and assured me of how strong I was. Eric knew what it took to keep going – and it wasn't being weak. Bill did the same thing too. After Lorena tortured him, he didn't rely on someone else to make it better – he went on a little holiday and did something for himself. Machu Picchu at night it was for him. It's a pity I don't have the money or benefit of healing within hours, or I'd go somewhere too. Feeling strong at heart again, I went back to the couch to continue with these thoughts. They were eating up the time this week like real champs.

This whole relationship is impossible to begin with. Apart from Pam, I don't know anyone who is cheering me on; and Pam is no one's cheerleader. She's eaten cheerleaders I'm sure, but beyond that, not so much. Almost everyone is against me being with Eric. All for different reasons and their own agendas, but still, it makes things hard on me. I don't know if it gets too badly to Eric.

This is far worse than it ever was with Bill. Not just those that like the FotS viewpoint are telling me I shouldn't be with any vampire, and the townspeople and random thoughts of not being with a vampire. The multitudes of crap I'd heard before, when I was with Bill. Sam got angry with me, Quinn came around to tell me what a fool I am. Alcide and other weres didn't react well either, and none of the fairies are giving me the thumbs up. Even other vampires don't think it's a good idea – the King thinks it would be far better if I were in Vegas with him. Then we've got the charming patrons of Fangtasia, who all show their disapproval for me too, all for their own reasons.

No one is for this, and I don't want that to end up pushing me into making a mistake with Eric. I'm not going to stop, but I'm not some rebellious teenager who intends to show them all and get myself hurt in the process. Sensible adults want me to take precautions, and I can't let myself be blinded to the very tough realities I face. I'll be the one to pay the price for the mistake if they're all right, and I'm wrong, if Eric is wrong, and this can't work.

I'd watched and "listened" to the dilemmas that Andy and Halleigh Bellefleur faced, and the only difference with them is a couple of years and money. There are more differences between Eric and I than just a couple of years and money. I'm right at the opposite end of the spectrum to him. He's rich and I'm poor, he's old and I'm young, he's dead and I'm alive. He loves politics and power and endless machinations. I love peace and quiet, and an uncomplicated life. I rely on his protection, and he relies on my services. Just because there's this feeling of rightness and a couple of weeks of a relationship together that is yet undefined, doesn't mean that all goes away.

Like blood bonds, there's no resource support group for what to do if you think you might want to be with a Viking vampire Sheriff who's been dead for the last millennium. No one could help me with this and no one was in this same situation. The only person who helped me so far figure things out was Tara, and she doesn't even like vampires. Sometimes the loneliness of my position stings, because goodness knows, I don't have enough loneliness already.

Sometimes I wonder if Eric isn't just as lonely as I am. A few times he's said things to me that tug at my heartstrings, things that just demonstrate how few times people really think about him, as a whole person. Not as parts - the vampire part, or the Sheriff part, or the gorgeous man, or the politician. I don't want to be pushed into this relationship in desperation that I'll be lonely forever. I'm not going to trade off this current loneliness just for a different kind of loneliness.

If being with Eric is going to cut off all those who people who get me through the day, then I can't go on with it all being as unsure as I am now. I think Eric 'gets me' but I can't just be with Eric for the rest of my days and let him become my whole world. Eric has his own unlife to live without a telepathic limpet to cling to him. I think that independent spirit is part of what we have in common. Most of the fun times I've had with him aren't when I've had to rely on him for care, like when he's dressed my many wounds over the time I've known him. Those fun times have been when I've been doing my own thing, with him there, doing his own thing, being together. That's the sort of life I would want with Eric.

I decided to zone out for a bit and watch a bit of television. I must have drifted off at some stage during a game show, because Amelia shook me awake and prompted me to go to bed. I shuffled in and collapsed there.


	6. Friday

_Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE._

This was written with love and thanks (but without ESN) to Thyra10 (Dead without a Work Permit) and with the help and encouragement of the wonderful members of the Alexander Skarsgård Library Forum.

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**Friday**

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I wake up today and the cleansing frenzy seems to be going on in the upstairs part of the house. It seems to involve ladders and more bleach and the occasional screech about the mould that pervades Louisiana houses. Amelia seems to be getting better, and working harder to find something to clean. She's not so quiet today, and actively coming out with words – which is a nice change from sombre silence.

I'm feeling altogether better too. I have more energy today than I have in a while, and I daresay I'm approaching normal. I slowly move out of bed, and for the first time in days, I clean up with a washrag, and put on some clothes. Clothes just make you feel more like a proper person, civilised and more put together. Dr. Ludwig is going to be calling around Saturday morning to take the stitches out, which will mean I can have a shower. The absolute bliss might even rival my all time favourite shower….

I go out to the kitchen and make some toast, some coffee, and sit down to eat it. I think getting some of my thinking in order has helped me sort things out too. Now I have to think about how to move forward in our relationship.

One of the key things I've discovered is that I know some of Eric the person, some of Eric the vampire, but lots of things stump me about him, and about me. It's not surprising that after only a year and a half, I know only a little about Eric the person and vampire, and that after two whole weeks, I know hardly anything about being in a relationship with him.

Somehow, I don't think Eric is any better at this than I am. I would have said before that surely he knew – he'd been married before, right? But from what I knew about how he married his wife, he hadn't had to persuade her, and he was only getting to know the girl he intended to marry when Appius turned him. I suppose on the plus side, I have something in common with his wife – the relationship starts out with knowing her while she's with someone else, and then suddenly being married for the sake of politics.

In all the time that I've known him, Eric hasn't been big with the dating scene – feeding in his office doesn't count as a date in my book. I don't know if he's had any other relationships with human women in the last couple of centuries either. Somehow, I don't think that before the Great Revelation that he had equal relationships. Eric had told me that he'd had the blood of many women, and had almost utter control over them. That doesn't speak to a relationship, just to him being a vampire. It's what all of them did to hide, so it doesn't really compare. I know it's not what I want, and he doesn't seem to want that with me.

Of course, he tried to convince me to follow the route that all these other women wanted, but look where they ended up. Eric didn't talk about them the same way as he did about me. He talked about control over them, not happiness. So I can't just go along with what these women wanted, if that's really what they wanted at all. I'm not them, and I'll never be them.

So maybe Eric didn't have any more experience in relationships than I had. Or perhaps I had more than him – at least of vampire/human relationships, which is funny and scary. If I'm the person with the most relationship experience, then we're in real trouble. But Eric had told me he didn't do this much, what with the control, and not having women to his house. Sometimes being the exception to the rule was a little scary.

Eric offered for me to move in with him, in a way to save me from whatever perils the Fae world had planned for me. I sometimes wonder if I should have done just that, and hidden at his house. I'm sure I'll second-guess that decision to my dying day. But the real truth of the matter is that those _Things_ that caused this could wait for me forever. They frightened even Eric, and I'm sure that I could be sitting here, in the same state, weeping instead because they staked him and took me anyway. That's if I would be sitting here at all. After all, if Bill hadn't seen them take me and contacted Eric and Niall, I would have been with them long enough for their plans to take effect. Plans that didn't have me leaving that room. If I'd been staying at Eric's, no one would have seen them take me. Eric isn't all-powerful, and he's dead in the day, and I'm very glad I don't have him to add to the casualty list.

They almost killed Bill, and they almost killed me. The _Things _even told me that they found my parents and killed them too even though Fintan hid them. Eric said on the night of the Vegas takeover that he couldn't defend his house all by himself, so it wasn't going to be some impregnable fortress I could hide in for the rest of my days. If he would be vulnerable there, then so would I. Somehow, hiding wouldn't have been the solution to trying to dodge this incident – information and caution, maybe, but not hiding. Going to stay at Eric's house may have changed the scenery for what happened, but it didn't mean that it wouldn't have happened. But I'll never know now how badly it could have gone, and I'm sure I'll always wonder if I couldn't have made things better for myself.

I'm glad for my own sake that I made it through, even though it's all hard and painful. I'm also glad that I didn't move into Eric's house too. He didn't offer that to me because he really wanted me there, or at least that wasn't what he'd told me. He told me it might be best and sensible. Oh the romance! Eric thought it was expedient for me to stay, not that it would be nice. How much more complicated would my inevitable break-up with Bill have been if I'd moved across the cemetery like he'd asked me before Dallas? Eric didn't even dispute me that it would mess with his life. It would certainly have messed with mine.

If I'd gone to stay with Eric, sure, he might have protected me, and maybe no one would have died, but instead of _The Incident _having me lose my mind, slowly crumbling away in Eric's house could have done the trick. I meant what I said to Eric that night. I needed to work on my shields all the time, in order not to let my telepathy make me a shut in. It's the one reason I wasn't sitting alone in my house in the woods for the rest of my life, subsisting through working at home schemes and Internet shopping.

I can't afford to give up the mental exercise of constantly keeping my shields up. If I was ever tempted not to do that mental exercise, I'd become lazy about it, and soon the din would become too much. Bill helped me cope with my telepathy better by practicing on the Fangtasia employees, not by having the constant quiet. Vampires were a great relief, as were weres, and they offered me a reprieve and a normal relationship, but it couldn't be more than that. I didn't want to be like the Ancient Pythoness – guarded and brought out for special occasions. If I ever wanted to be with people again, I just couldn't close myself off that way. I _know_ I don't want to spend all of my time with supes. Whatever I am, part fae, telepath, I'm mostly human, and I want to be around humans.

I don't want all of my relationship to move ahead with Eric because it makes practical and political sense. I'll accept some of the things that have to be done for my protection, but there's a limit to what I'll give up in order to still walk this Earth. I don't want to give up sunlight and food and freedom to be a vampire. I don't want to give up my sanity so I can be safe in body, even though my mind is long gone. I don't want to give up my control so that everything goes smoothly for everyone else. I'd had a taste of what it was like to be surrounded by beings that didn't consider you a person – _The Things _didn't consider me that way – they cared not one bit. I wasn't going to live the rest of my life like that.

This relationship, as big and scary as it is, asks me to give up a lot already. If I stay with Eric, I have to accept that there will be the death of some of my dreams. I will always have less hours with him because I can have both the day and the night and he needs the night to do his vampire ventures, be they making his living or being Sheriff. I know that being with him will mean going to live in Shreveport with all of my friends back in Bon Temps – everything he is and has is rooted there. I knew that when I refused his offer to come and stay with me when he was cursed. Eric equals Shreveport. I will have to give up breakfasts and watching the sunrise together and the idea that one day my husband and I will retire and enjoy our old age. Eric will never do any of those things with me. I have to give up the idea that I will have _normalcy_, and I'm not so sure I'm pragmatic enough to do that yet.

I will never have children for one. Eric's life is just too dangerous to bring a child into. He has a tough time protecting me from all of my troubles, and I couldn't do that to a child. I can't hand up a nice piece of leverage to all the vampires who would bend me to their will by using a child to get to me. I couldn't keep a child inside for the rest of their lives, and I wasn't willing to subject that same child to the sometimes erratic and violent nature of vampires. Even if I could, I know Eric isn't that cruel and heartless to bring a child into danger, like it was a hobby, so that I could have a normal experience like every other woman. He'd been a father himself, and he knows you're supposed to love them – not use them selfishly to fulfil your needs while ignoring their own.

My life in the supernatural world has been dangerous anyway. Too many people know about me in the supernatural world now, and they'll never let me go. In the supernatural world, I'm the smallest pawn in the biggest game of chess ever played. It didn't escape my notice that tales of Eric and I had travelled far and wide. Niall knew about our tie to each other, and I certainly hadn't been spreading it around, otherwise some support group would have invited me to join. Eric didn't tell many about it either, because Felipe de Castro didn't know that I was bonded to him. Sam knew that he could go to Eric for help with a bartender because of me. All the fangbangers seemed to know me by name on the phone. Charles Twining tried to kill me because of the things he heard. Eric told me he tried to downplay our relationship, but the King didn't buy it.

No matter what, I'm never getting out. With or without Eric, I might never have children. I have to face up to the fact that I'm not normal, no matter how much I want to be. No matter how much I might yearn to be a married housewife with little children running round and playing in the sun, their blonde heads nodding together, I will never be that. I will never have all those small things that I watch my friends get effortlessly. I can't even hope to go a couple of months without incurring serious injury. I need a while to face this fact, that even though I feel like I don't matter, I've played a pivotal role in too many incidents, too many wars, to just hitch my star to the closest person who offers protection. Felipe offered me the same and I didn't take him up on it. As for the bond, that's not a reason to do anything either – I wouldn't have taken up with Andre if Eric hadn't turned up in the corridor. This has to come from a place in me, a willingness to make a commitment.

I want Eric, but my presence and pain seems to be required by so many that I can't afford to just jump in blindly. Just wanting is not going to make this work out. If this relationship is going to be the equal one I want, I should also think about how it will hurt Eric too. Even if it all goes right with him, it wouldn't be the first time someone tried to hurt Eric by hurting me. That wouldn't change even if I decided to become a vampire, which I'm _not_ doing. That would just put me under the same political rule as Eric, and an asset to them, that they could do what they like with. It's not a solution even if I wanted it.

Eric will have to face up to the fact that I'll leave him one day, just by the nature of what I am. I'm not going to live forever. Some might say that with the limited time I have, however long that is, that I should throw myself into it all, with abandon. Yeah, cause Vegas weddings are _always_ the best, I'm sure. His unlife will be made difficult with my presence, get him into more battles than ever, at least going by my track record. I'm a valuable commodity to others, because what I want really doesn't matter to them. Only my political value, my retail value, my ability to save them time, effort, lives and money matters. Now that the Fae are leaving, I wonder the effect that's going to have on my desirability, and who will target me next. I don't have the buffer that Niall and my fae connections provided me either.

If I can make this work with Eric, then I can't jump in without regard – there's no book on how to integrate your human life with a vampire's existence. I have never met another human in my position, so I don't have any way to see how it's done. Eric suggested the way all the other women in his life have wanted to do it, but he told me that I was different from them, so why emulate their patterns? I appreciated that he wanted to give it to me before I asked for it, but that wasn't what I wanted from him.

Eric perhaps still doesn't understand that I truly will never make demands on them in the same way that other women do, at least in our personal relationship. I hadn't asked for gifts, or for promises he made in his cursed state, or to live in his house and let him support me. It wasn't in me to be demanding, as if I had a right to these things for some reason. When I say that it is Eric I want, I mean that heart and soul. Not his money, not his power and prestige, and not as a personal bodyguard. I can give him something that those other women never could. That must factor into what he found so very enjoyable about our time together – I never asked him for anything.

I asked for the King's protection from the Fae troubles, I didn't expect him to rescue me. Sure, during _The Incident _I hoped that he was coming, I prayed that he'd come, but I didn't see it that he was obliged to come find me. Anything Eric ever gave me, I valued because he wanted to give it to me. Not because it was a requirement. Of course, this was also a lasting issue between us. Eric thought he had some obligation to me in New Orleans after Jake Purifoy's attack. He'd cited the bond that we had, but that wasn't reason enough to give me anything – genuine heartfelt gestures were what I wanted, not obligations. I don't want to be his obligation, a sacred trust, some _possession._

Maybe in his long life, and all the women who demanded things, he never understood the sort of person I have always been. I was not someone who would demand tribute as if I was a goddess, or because this was the stage at which this pre-determined stage was going ahead. Anything genuine is given, not taken. Eric is surrounded by takers – both people and vampires. Nobody gave him anything freely. That was the vampire's world – you took and you demanded, and you manoeuvred. You didn't give, you didn't help, and you weren't charitable. It was one of the reasons it never would have worked with Quinn – it wasn't in me to demand time away from his mother and sister, to be not always sacrificed to their needs.

That week in my house, for my part, I demanded nothing. I didn't demand the money for taking him in (although I was later glad to have it) or ask for him to do anything he didn't want to do. I didn't demand he stay with me, and I didn't demand later that I would have all he promised. I will only accept what is freely given, and only what is finite. I won't run up a tab in my own name that I have to pay back at the discretion of the payer, and to the value the payer deems. In my experience those who demand, those who take find themselves indebted to others.

Tara found herself indebted to Franklin Mott – taking all that he had to give her as if it was some sort of payment for services. Copley Carmichael tried to get me into his debt with information on Remy Savoy. Quinn was indebted to the Colorado vampires for asking for help cleaning up dead men. I think my policy of not asking is the most sensible politically as well. I retain my freedom because I keep my debts and my demands low. If I were a more grasping person, I would have been in far worse situations, owned like a possession, too indebted to get myself out.

I don't want to be indebted, and I don't want to be owned. I don't want to do that to Eric either, as if he were a pet vampire. That's what my demands would make him. I wanted an even match, where neither of us were the boss, but captains of our own destinies that we shared together. He's already entwined in my life – in my body, in my blood, in my mind, in my house and he's just now making an appearance in my dreams, albeit in the form of a real estate agent. The idea that I could separate from him now is almost impossible. He's everywhere and he's not leaving. Pretty swift of him considering I've known him only for a year and a half. It will take everything I can think of to do not to let Eric overtake absolutely every corner of my life.

In the last couple of years, my life has gone from feast to famine and vice versa. I used to think I was doomed to spend my life alone, to die of old age. To have no one who understood the loneliness I felt, surrounded by other people who shunned me. I never fit in with my fellow humans. Now I still don't fit in, but the quality that had me shunned now is valued. I find myself now with a multitude of choices among men, or so it seems in my short experience of having a love life. Old age doesn't seem so daunting or silent as it once would have been – it seems to be an almost unattainable goal.

I rushed into the supernatural world with no real idea or thought of what it would mean, and it has swallowed me up. The price I've paid to be what I am in the supernatural world is high – perhaps higher than I want to pay. It welcomed me with open arms, but since I have been the subject of many plots. So much that I've gotten weary of the plots, almost always the last to know that everything I am is on the line – my body, my blood, my pain, my soul, my mind. Every time it spits me back out and keeps a little bit of me. Over time I've become harder and tougher. I haven't come to terms with that reality, not really. What I really need is to become _smarter._

I don't want to rush into anything with Eric. I don't want to rush into another mistake, and have it spit me back out with less than I had before. What I have with him now is deep and undefined, and if I rush my decisions, then I could end up with nothing. I could end up with nothing because I messed up and didn't do things slowly, with thought, and with surety, because I rushed in where anyone facing the same challenges would fear to tread. Eric was so much more and he could consume me, heart and soul. He could leave me an empty husk, far better than _The Things_ ever managed.

I finally have something to talk about. If we talk about this when he comes tomorrow, then I can tell him. For all I know, he knows this all already. I'm sure that he's not blind to how overwhelming he can be, how dangerous his life is, and how precarious his politics can be. After all, Eric has used that to his advantage all these years – I remember a time when he flooded the room with his presence and quelled Longshadow and Pam. His approaches to me so far have been without pressure, tentative and thoughtful. He hasn't tried to force me into decisions, at least in our personal, rather than our political situation. I can trust to his intelligence and experience to have figured this out without having to say a word.

With a smile, I go into my bedroom to get started on a romance book. Maybe we won't need a _**talk**_ after all.

**The End.**

* * *

A/N: I'm Team Eric all the way.

But he's a scary guy, like the Mafiosi or a drug cartel kingpin. Sure, "bowling for vampires" is a hilarious line if you're not in the vicinity of an actual severed head, but Sookie, in her reality has lots to be reticent about. No woman with any brains (and let's face it, has Eric ever shown his appreciation for the brainless? Is that whereof his regard springs?) would hurl herself with abandon at him. Even if she did let him set the pace alone, then she'd lose parts of herself - and Eric didn't get interested in a lesser Sookie. I think Sookie has brains, and she doesn't lie to herself about how very dangerous he is, nor should she. He's not blind to this either, so I don't see that he'd be angry about her not doing what he wants and ditch her because she can't deal with it right this second.

Many of these issues are a double edged sword for Sookie – Eric is this far into Sookie's life with careful planning on Charlaine Harris' part. He's not going anywhere.


End file.
